_THE TEAPOT._ We were all sitting at the table together. All told, we were ten, viz: Celeste and her maiden aunt, who had a sorrow when she was young, a blighted affection, or something of that sort; Aurelia, now Mrs. Peplum; Mr. Peplum, who has become much more sedate since his family affair with Aurelia; Aurelia's mother, who is getting old and rather fussy; Blanche, and young Boosey, who is sweet on Blanche; Old Blobbs, the Water street indigo merchant, and Mrs. Blobbs; and myself. "As I was about to say when I was interrupted, the teapot...." Here I was again interrupted by young Boosey, who was filling himself to repletion with brandied peaches, and who rather scornfully remarked to Old Blobbs that tea might do well enough for old women, but that, for a steady diet, he preferred champagne punches. Old Blobbs silenced him by telling him that if he spent less for champagne punches, it would be for the interest of his landlady. The rebuke was severe, but just. As I was about to say when I was interrupted the second time, the teapot is one of the strongest links in the chain of society. If my friend Blobbs, across the way, will recall his youthful days, he will confess that all his subsequent prosperity and happiness are due to the teapot. He will remember that in those days, when, strange as it may seem, he was addicted to Byronic collars and bad rhymes, he accompanied the future Mrs. Blobbs home from singing-school one June night, and that, as they went across the fields instead of by the straight road, he felt excessively foolish at the manner in which the stars winked and blinked at each other. You see, my friend Blobbs thought that he was the first man in the world who had ever done that sort of thing; and my dear Mrs. Blobbs will pardon me if I say that she was excessively sheepish also over the fancy that, for the first time in the world, she was receiving the attentions of a young man. But the stars were used to it, and knew what would come of it. Ever since they peeped through the branches of the Tree of Knowledge and saw Adam sitting up with Eve, they had been looking at a young man and a young woman rehearsing this same old story, and, my dear Blobbs, long after you and I are under the daisies, they will shine down upon young men and young women, going across the fields and telling the same old story. It is the only story which can't be printed fast enough to supply the demand.